Political Quotes

“Finally, on another subject, Mr. President, Senate Republicans today will promote Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric with action. This afternoon, the Senate will vote to consider a pair of bills proposed by the junior Senators from Pennsylvania and Texas. These bills follow Trump's lead in demonizing and criminalizing immigrant Latino families. Senator Toomey's bill will undermine the ability of local law enforcement to police their own communities and to ensure public safety. It would deny millions of dollars of critical community and economic development funding to cities and States that refuse to target immigrant families. Senator Toomey's legislation would simply create more problems. It wouldn't solve anything. Not surprisingly, it is opposed by mayors, domestic violence groups, Latino and civil rights groups, and labor organizations. Senator Cruz's bill is no better. It would enact unnecessary mandatory minimum sentences and would cost billions and billions of new dollars, increasing the prison population and siphoning funding from State and local law enforcement. Worst of all, this sort of partisan, piecemeal approach undermines bipartisan efforts to enact badly needed reforms in our criminal justice system. One desk over from me is Dick Durbin, the assistant Democratic leader. He has worked for years on doing something about the criminal justice system.…”